It is known to collect crop residue discharged from the back of a combine harvester and to convey the collected material into an in-field collection device. Further, it is known to provide a horizontal deflector door to split a flow of residue into upper and lower streams with the upper stream being collected and the lower stream being directed to spreader vanes which operate to disperse the lower stream onto the ground. A crop residue handling device of this type is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/062,846, filed Apr. 4, 2008 and published as US 2008/0248843 on Oct. 9, 2008. This patent application discloses a control system for automatically varying the amount of the crop residue collected as a function of one or more of soil parameters, crop parameters or terrain parameters, which parameters are sensed “on the go” during the harvesting procedure and/or are provided in the form of previously garnered field mapping data which is used in conjunction with an on-board global positioning system to output desired control signals.
A refinement of the known residue handling device was developed which included a transverse wedge-shaped nose for intercepting crop from the horizontal deflector so as to split the crop into the upper and lower streams. While this usage of a wedge-shaped nose for splitting the residue flow worked satisfactorily in respective modes wherein all of the flow was collected or all of the flow was diverted, the operation was not satisfactory for varying the flow between these two extreme modes, and crop residue tended to hairpin on the splitting nose resulting in plugging.
The problem to be solved then is to provide an apparatus for splitting crop residue issuing from the back of a combine between a collection arrangement and a spreading arrangement while avoiding the drawbacks associated with the known splitter arrangement.